“Commander Ramsay and the Princess themselves had a private survey of their new possessions yesterday before the guests appeared, and report has it warmly congratulated one another on the interest and beauty of most of the things, and the unusual percentage of unimaginative and ugly offerings.”

    Daily Sketch.

Although the statement is somewhat ambiguous, we feel sure that the writer meant well.

* * * * *

The Tonic of March.

(With acknowledgments to the author).

  Month of the Winds (especially the East)
    That staunch the young year’s floods by dyke and dam,
  Who enter like a lion, that great beast,
    And make your egress like a woolly lamb;
  Who come, as Mars full-armed for battle’s shocks,
    From lethargy of Winter’s sloth to wean us,
  Then melt (about the vernal equinox),
    As he did in the softer arms of Venus;—­

  O Month, before your final moon is set,
    Much may have happened—­anything, in fact;
  More than in any March that I have met
    (Last year excepted) fearful nerves are racked;
  Anarchy does with Russia what it likes;
    Paris is put conundrums very knotty;
  And here in England, with its talk of strikes,
    Men, like your own March hares, seem going dotty.

  Blow, then, with all your gales and clear our skies! 
    We did not win that War the other day
  To please the Huns or gladden TROTSKY’S eyes
    By fighting, kin with kin, this futile way;
  Blow—­not too hard, of course—­I should not care
    To inconvenience Mr. Wilson on his voyage—­
  But just enough to clean the germy air
    And usher in the universal Joy-Age.

O.S.

* * * * *

Good-bye to the auxiliary patrol.

II.—­The ship’s company.

Demobilisation in the Navy, whatever it may be in the Army, is a simple affair.  You are first sent for by the Master-at-Arms, who glares, thrusts papers into your trembling hand and ejects you violently in the direction of the Demobilising Office.  Here they regard you curiously, stifle a yawn, languidly inspect your papers and send you to the Paymaster, who, after wandering disconsolately round the Pay Office, exclaiming pathetically, “I say, hasn’t anyone seen that Mixed Muster book?  It must be somewhere, you know,” returns you without thanks to the D.O., where they tell you to call again in three days’ time.  On returning you are provided with a P.I.O. and numerous necessary papers, requested to sign a few dozen forms, overwhelmed with an unexpected largesse of pay and sent forth on that twenty-eight days’ leave from which no traveller returns.  There’s nothing in it at all; the whole thing only lasts four days.  They do it by a system, I believe.